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1. 1 2022-08-08T19:55:32+00:00 hjdewaard c6c8628c72182a103f1a39a3b1e6de4bc774ea06 OEPr: Open Educational Practices hjdewaard 14 describes and defines open education practices focusing on teacher education plain 2023-06-24T20:19:42+00:00 hjdewaard c6c8628c72182a103f1a39a3b1e6de4bc774ea06

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• 1 2022-06-08T20:13:39+00:00 Teacher Education 43 literature review of teacher education and teacher educators plain 2023-10-29T21:00:05+00:00 "Simply put, it is reasonable to assume that quality teacher education depends on quality teacher educators. Yet, almost nowhere is attention being paid to what teacher educators should know and be able to do" (Goodwin & Kosnik, 2013, p. 334).
  
  Teaching is described as both art and science (Biesta, 2022; Marzano, 2007). Elements of teaching, according to Banner and Cannon (1997/2017) included learning, authority, ethics, order, imagination, compassion, patience, tenacity, character, and pleasure (see Figure 2). Across the provincial education jurisdictions for kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) education, elements of teaching practice are identified in the standards of practice and the ethical standards outlined for the profession (Alberta Education Office of Registrar, 2023; BC Teachers' Council, 2019; Ontario College of Teachers, 2020). Examining documents from Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, I notice a range of attitudes, ethics, competencies, fluencies, and skills. The teaching standards may be applied for verification and certification of graduates from a FoE course of study; however, these are not explicitly identified for the context of teacher education, nor are these standards connected to the practice of teaching by teacher educators. Although the connections between teaching, knowledge acquisition, learning, and literacy development are worthy of further investigation, these were not the primary focus of this conceptual investigation. I focused on the conceptual frameworks that grounded my investigation into media and digital skills, fluencies, competencies, and literacies of teacher educators as these are experienced within an open educational practice and defined the elements of a teaching practice.
  
            As the statement by Goodwin and Kosnik (2013) illuminated, there was an identified need for research into how TEds do what they do (Ellis & McNicholl, 2015) and delve into what it means to be a teacher educator. In this research, it is timely that teacher educators share their expertise as practitioners and theorists as part of an open educational network; making explicit what is often tacit and unspoken while sharing their knowledge, reflections and actions (Beck, 2016; Bennett & Bennett, 2008) outside of the traditional silos of academia. In this way, TEds may well showcase what they know and how they enact and embody the art and craft of teaching (Biesta, 2022; Marzano, 2007) (see Figure 3).
  
           With a focus on TEds as being a critical component in faculties of education, it was essential to examine factors relevant to teacher education and specifically on research relating to teacher educators. Teacher education programs are referenced here as faculties of education (FoE). These are departments in higher education institutions providing a course of study in the discipline of education, sometimes referenced as initial teacher education (Association of Canadian Deans of Education, 2017). Courses in the FoE were designed and delivered by teacher educators (TEds) to teacher candidates (TCs) who graduate to become licensed teachers, usually employed to work within the kindergarten to grade 12 sector (K-12) of education. For this research, FoE programs are differentiated from professional development courses, instructional design departments, or higher education centers for teaching and learning, where opportunities and support for the development of teaching skills and competencies may also be provided. These alternative learning opportunities are often informal or short-term and frequently come without the full range of courses, subject matter, or credentialing systems found in initial teacher education within a FoE.
  
            An additional consideration for this research was the inclusion rather than exclusion of reference to online course offerings and recognizing that open educational practices are not constrained to being only online. Chickering and Gamson's (1987) insights into good teaching practices for undergraduate online education included actions that encouraged contact between teachers and students, developed reciprocity and cooperation within course contacts, used active learning techniques, provided timely feedback, emphasized time on task, communicated explicit and high expectations, and respected diversity in learner’s talents and ways of learning. These elements may subsequently be seen as qualities of open educational practices.
  
            Since education in Canada falls under provincial jurisdiction, initial teacher education programs in FoE are developed with limited national oversight. An undergraduate degree followed by a course of study in the education department is the most common design of FoE in Canada (Russell & Dillon, 2015). Some universities offered a concurrent education program whereby education related courses are incorporated into the undergraduate course of study. A graduate degree at the master or PhD levels of study should not be confused with initial teacher education, alternatively called the professional-years study. For the purpose of this research, the focus was on initial teacher education, commonly completed within one to two years of study following an undergraduate degree.
  
            Research literature revealed two key issues in teacher education. First, teacher education programs faced the challenge of managing two competing demands - the ‘theory-practice’ and ‘research-teaching’ tensions (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Eisner, 2002; Zeichner, 2012). This episteme – phronesis dichotomy was an ongoing issue in teacher education (Pisova & Janik, 2011).  In Canada, these tensions were the focus of many FoE reform initiatives (Russell & Dillon, 2015). As outlined by Russell and Dillon (2015), teacher education program design traditionally included the what and the how of teaching practice. The what focused on foundational elements such as subject specific methods, aspects of teaching such as behaviour management or assessment, as well as the sequencing of courses and the organization of practicum experiences. The how focused on the process of enacting teaching in the classroom and the contexts of learning such as within a community of inquiry. Tensions emerged in FoE in a push/pull relationship for time, space, and attention to theory or practice. These tensions were exacerbated by recent pandemic-influenced teaching and learning constraints (Danyluk et al., 2022). The OEPr of TEds can reveal how working thing and through these tensions occurred. Through actively 'thinking out loud' in blogs, social media, and open publications, particularly when sharing details of the what, how, and why they do what they do, teacher educators may reveal integrated MDL activities, strategies, and opportunities within their OEPr.
  
            A second issue was the nature of those who teach in FoE. The term teacher educator (TEd) described those individuals tasked with teaching in the FoE. These TEds were seen as gatekeepers and lynchpins to the teaching profession and considered to be a critical factor in the quality and transformation of teacher education programs (Kosnik et al., 2015; Stillman et al., 2019; Voithofer et al., 2019). Yet it was noted that here is a highly transient nature of precarious employment within teacher education (Kosnik et al, 2015). Some TEds bring extensive practice from the field of education into their course designs. Other TEds may be new to the discipline, or become TEds as a result of an academic and research stream of study. Although teachers in the K-12 sector in many provinces are licensed to teach by a governing body, such as the Ontario College of Teachers, this is not a requirement for employment or teaching in higher education sectors such as FoE. Research noted that some TEds had extensive research experience yet may have little or no formal knowledge of teaching practices. Although TEds were considered central to good teacher education, they received little attention (Vloet & van Swet, 2010). TEds were often overlooked, invisible, and rarely researched within the field of education (Crawley, 2018; Izadinia, 2014; Kosnik et al., 2015; Voithofer et al., 2019; Woloshyn et al., 2017). Perceptions suggested that TEds:

  should be able to handle themselves in their practice, to act in an effective way, to take care for themselves and to be physically, emotionally and cognitively balanced. They should have a realistic self-concept, concerning who they are, what they are able to do and how they want to develop themselves, especially when coping with educational innovations. … They should have insight into their personal experiences, feelings, values and motives, and gain self-knowledge about processes of their identity development, construction of meaning and their professional development (Vloet & van Swet, 2010, p. 150).

            With rapid changes in media and digital technologies impacting the preparation of teachers in FoE, there were increasing demands on teacher educators to improve outcomes (Buss et al., 2018; Garcia-Martin et al., 2016). Research and change efforts in FoE included: a) self-study (Hordvik et al., 2020; Kosnik et al., 2015); b) the infusion of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) frameworks (Allen & Katz, 2023; Jaipal-Jamani et al., 2018; Voithofer et al., 2019); c) the application of participatory teaching (West-Puckett et al., 2018); d) networking and collaborative teaching and learning (Heldens, 2017; Lohnes Watulak, 2018; Oddone et al., 2019); e) digital literacies and digital citizenship (Choi et al., 2018; Nascimbeni, 2018); and f) open educational practices (Albion et al., 2017; Kim, 2018). Recent research showed some of the issues and opportunities TEds face when digital literacies were infused or integrated within Canada’s teacher education programs (DeWaard, 2022). Changes to FoE programs are politically driven, as suggested by the US Department of Educational Technology 2016 report on the Advancing Educational Technology in Teacher Preparation: Policy Brief (Stokes-Beverley & Simoy, 2016) calling upon "leaders of teacher preparation programs to engage in concerted, programmatic shifts" (p. 4). The political impact on teacher education is evident in governmental reforms that drastically changed the organization and application of initial teacher education programs in Faculties of Education in Ontario (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2015).
  
            Although not explicit to MDL or OEPr research, this research was informed by the teacher educator technology competencies (TETCs) proposed by Foulger et al., (2017) in their exploration of the technological practices of TEds. The TETCs establishes a foundational set of skills and attributes which can support self-reflection and professional development (Foulger et al., 2017). Subsequent research examined these competencies in practice (Thomas et al., 2019), but explicit connections to MDL within OEPr of TEds in FoE have yet to be made. Allen and Katz (2019) proposed that teacher educators were positioned to impact the future or OEPr within K-12 education. With this in mind, this research focused on the nexus between MDL and OEPr found in teacher educators in FoE in Canadian contexts, recognized the complexity of teaching in teacher education, and hinted at a life-long learning approach to teacher education (Livingston, 2014, 2017). 
   
• 1 2022-06-08T21:22:24+00:00 The Gathering 19 relating to data and how it is managed plain 2023-10-02T13:42:01+00:00 Vagle (2021) suggested P-IP researchers gather materials rather than data. This distinction is important in order to semantically separate research endeavors from qualitative, positivist perspectives about what researchers collect. Thus, I applied the term data gathering for this research work. Vagle (2018) suggested that phenomena determined “how it is to be studied” (p. 75) and described multiple data gathering moments including observations, writings, interviews, drawings, and music collected over a specified period of time. In fitting with the research topic, this method honoured the ethos of openness of OEPr, examinined the multiplicity of textual information, and revealed an openness in data gathering. Vagle (2018) suggested data moments could include arts-based methods such as drawings, paintings, photos, visuals, films, and performance art. Knowing that these were potential options did not mean that I would use all of these formats in my research.
  
            I planned the interview protocol (see Appendix D) to be fluid and flexible since unstructured interviews were the most common interview type in phenomenology due to their open dialogic nature (Kennedy, 2016; Vagle, 2018). Data gathering began with web searches of FoE sites for participant related information. Digital information originating from daily digital interactions by participants in online platforms were “extremely insightful to understand what digital actors ‘do’, rather than who they ‘are’” (Caliandro & Gandini, 2017). I searched for open sources of information, such as participants’ social media locations including blog sites, Twitter, Instagram, and course websites wherever these were posted openly on the internet. This information supported the focus and topics that I wove into the interview, often as a conversation prompt or question. Although information garnered from multiple web sources may reveal MDL in action, these data gatherings provided insights into the lived experiences, intentionalities, and digital identities of the participants.
  
            For my own processes in this research, I used a variety of digital technologies to manage and generate data gatherings. First, digital data analysis was done using NVivo on an Apple Macbook Pro laptop computer. I used Zoom video conferencing software to capture the interviews. The web-based audio transcription software Otter.ai generated drafts of the interview transcripts in a timely manner, sometimes allowing me to return transcripts within forty-eight hours to the participants. The web-based word cloud creation software WordArt was used to re-create the transcripts into graphic renderings. This was selected from the abundance of word cloud generators since I already had a free account with this service. This software allowed me to download a portable network graphic (PNG) image and provide a web-access link to the interactive word cloud image. I used the web-based open access software Draw.io for concept mapping since it integrated into an existing Google account. I used the graphic visualization software ProCreate on an iPad to generate sketchnotes of concepts and research findings.
  
            Since both digital and paper forms of research journals were fluid territories for me, I kept both versions of research journals to capture notes of my thoughts and observations. This included annotations, video recordings, and textual artifacts. I curated, stored, and organized notes within participant folders on my computer hard drive, on private blog posts, and posted thoughts on open blog posts when anonymity was maintained. 
  
            Notes and annotations for this research included jottings, descriptive observations of social media sites such as tweets and blog posts, and linkages recorded as marginalia on transcripts. Since jottings and cognitive connections occurred at any time, these were recorded at the time, place, and available media, indicative of the fluid nature of the research process. Saldaña (2016) suggested these private, personal, written and recorded musings become “question-raising, puzzle-piecing, connection-making, strategy-building, problem-solving, answer-generating, rising-above-the-data” heuristics (p. 44). I heeded Saldaña’s (2016) caution to not rely on “mental notes to self” (p. 45) as a method, and took advantage of the technologies at hand to capture my wonderings and wanderings along research paths. 
  
            Vagle (2018) suggested taking walks to provide time and space for phenomenological musings to occur. With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing as I conducted the research, outdoor walks and bike rides not only provided time to think, or to NOT think, but also became an avenue for mental health and well-being during this research phase. In true P-IP fashion, the technology made me as researcher while I made notes about research data gatherings (see Figure 14). As the liveliness of my notes and musings also became data gatherings, these notes revealed the “affective or entangled engagements with materializations or textualualizations whether as a glow or a strange idea or an imaginative glimpse into a new becoming” (Ellingson & Sotirin, 2020, p. 22).
  
            Throughout the process of gathering these data materials, I created observational notes and began to establish preliminary connections to MDL frameworks. In the early stages of the research, I engaged with data making (Ellingson & Sotirin, 2020) in order to create dynamic representations for each participant. I created and revisited conceptual maps of connections, locations, and literacies using a variety of software in order to “animate new ways of thinking and relating by affirming heretofore unimagined configurations” (Ellingson & Sotirin, 2020, p. 11).
• 1 2022-06-04T15:43:12+00:00 Glossary 19 alphabetic listing of glossary items with links to notes that describe each item plain 2023-06-28T15:29:30+00:00 Here is an alphabetic listing of the glossary items included in this dissertation document. Each item is linked to a note where the item is defined, described, and/or examples provided. These glossary items are also embedded throughout the document as notes within pages, where they provide 'just in time' clarification for you, the reader.
  • Actor Network Theory
  • Affinity Spaces
  • Alternative Dissertation
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Black Box technology
  • Block Chain
  • ChatGPT
  • Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS)
  • Creative Commons
  • Cynefin framework
  • Data Gathering
  • Digital Rights Management (DRM)
  • Educommunication
  • Emirec
  • Episteme / Phronesis
  • Faculty of Education (FoE)
  • #FemEdTech
  • Free and Open Software (FOSS)
  • Homo Faber
  • Hupomnemata
  • Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)
  • Learning Management Systems (LMS)
  • Makerspace
  • Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Media and Information Literacy (MIL)
  • Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
  • Open Educational Practices (OEPr)
  • Paywall
  • Platforms
  • PDF
  • Portable Graphics Network (PNG)
  • Post-Intentional Phenomenology (P-IP)
  • Practice - both noun and verb
  • Research Ethics Board (REB)
  • Safety, Security, Privacy, Permission (SSPP)
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada (SSHRC)
  • Teacher Candidates (TCs)
  • Teacher Educators (TEds)
  • Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs)
  • TPACK
  • Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans
  • UNESCO
  • Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
  • Universal Serial Bus (USB)
  • Visitors / Residents
  
   
• 1 2022-06-04T15:47:05+00:00 Beginning 18 general introduction to this dissertation plain 166 2023-08-11T14:12:18+00:00 This dissertation outlines my exploration into the lived experiences of teacher educators in Canadian faculties of education (FoE) applying media and digital literacies within an openly shared teaching practice. I stand within the confluence of three fields of study. This research emerges from my own lived experiences as a teacher educator, open educator, and explorer of media and digital literacies. This research is a response to my passion to bring teacher education into the open and a desire to amplify teacher educators' voices beyond the field of education. I incorporate the living literacies proposed by Pahl et al., (2020) into the lived experiences with media and digital literacies in teaching practices of teacher educators. This research supports the growing demand for media and digitally literate educators (CMEC, 2020) and responds to global calls for open educational practices (Bates, 2019; Montoya, 2018).
  
            For this research, I apply a post-intentional phenomenological methodology to explore teacher educators’ stories of their lived experiences within their participatory, collaborative, networked, shared, and public-facing educational practices (Cronin & MacLaren, 2018; Lohnes Watulak, 2018; Lohnes Watulak et al., 2018; Tur et al., 2020). Current research in the field of open educational practices (OEPr) has limited exploration in the field of teacher education and has yet to explicitly examine the critical role played by media and digital literacies (Bozkurt et al., 2019; Cronin, 2017). This prompted my wonderings about how teacher educators’ OEPr are impacted by the application or absence of media and digital literacies?
  
            This dissertation is presented in six chapters. In chapter one I share the rationale and research questions driving this investigation, followed by my positionality as an educator and scholar in the field of teacher education. I then share details and the rationale for the alternative dissertation (ALT-DISS) production format for this manuscript. Chapter two includes the literature review outlining the theoretical and conceptual frameworks grounding the research of media and digital literacies in teacher education from an open educational lens. In chapter three I share the research design for this inquiry including the methodology and methods. This includes the data gathering methods, research phases and timelines, participant involvement, interview design, coding and analysis processes, and the ethics review considerations. In chapter four I share the data analysis and results obtained from the research. Chapter five includes the discussion of the findings. In chapter six, I conclude this dissertation with chapter summaries, implications, limitations, recommendations and conclusions from this research.
   
• 1 2022-06-08T19:57:48+00:00 Phenomenology 15 defines and describes the literature for the conceptual framework of phenomenology plain 2023-10-02T17:36:25+00:00 ​​​​​Phenomenology was both philosophy and methodology for this research (Creely et al., 2020). As the primary locus and topic of this study, phenomenological research aimed to reveal and describe lived experiences in order to gain understanding of the meaning of phenomena (Cilesiz, 2011). Thus my research focused on “richly describing the experiential essence of human experiences” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65) as this related to MDL and OEPr in teacher education. 
  
            I created a remixed graphic rendering of the conceptual framework of phenomenology in order to gain understanding (see Figure 1 below).
  
            Two central concepts in phenomenology were the notions of lifeworlds and intentionality. Lifeworlds are described as the immediate experiences of what already exists, emerging from the world in its natural and emerging state (Tracy, 2020). The lifeworld is where the phenomena were experienced and lived (Vagle, 2018). In this research, this lifeworld included both the physical world of the participants' geographic localized ecologies but also their digital and electronic spaces described through I-Technology-World relationships (Idhe, 1990; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). Intentionality was described as the meaning and “connections that emerge in relations, contexts, and across time” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 463). This use of the word intentionality was not to be confused with the intent, purpose, aim, or plan to do something. For phenomenologists, intentionality described “the way humans are connected meaningfully with the world” (Vagle, 2018, p. 126). Phenomenological researchers were aware of how “words, language, concepts, and theories distort, mediate, and shape raw experience” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65). Criticality and self-reflection were imperative considerations in phenomenological research (Tracy, 2020).
  
            In order to fully understand the post-intentional phenomenological (P-IP) paradigm (Clifden & Vagle, 2020; Vagle & Hofsess, 2016) within which this research was framed, I first explored the differences between the transcendental phenomenology and the hermeneutic, existential phenomenological research paradigms, since these two paradigms were more often applied to phenomenological research. I then uncovered the third phenomenological paradigm and explained why post-intentional phenomenology (Vagle, 2018; Valentine et al., 2018) provided the best fit for this research.

  Transcendental Phenomenology

  Transcendental, or descriptive phenomenology, was inspired by Husserl’s philosophy of consciousness (Tracy, 2020; Valentine, 2018). How the research participant knows, or is consciously aware of some object, real or imagined, thus holding a ‘consciousness of something’, was foundational when describing the “essence of a phenomenon or experience” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 464). The researcher must set aside their biases or habits of seeing while conducting the research and data analysis. This was done through a process of bracketing or transcending previously conceived theory, experiences, and understandings. This removed the researcher’s influence from the interpretation of the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018; Tracy, 2020). Since meaning was derived from the “intentional relation between subject and object” the research studied the “of-ness” of the phenomenon (Vagle, 2018, p. 39). The focus was on accurate and rich descriptions of the phenomenon as it was understood or known by the research participants.
  
            For this research, the phenomenon under scrutiny was the MDL within OEPr. This research shifted away from transcendental phenomenology since I did not ‘bracket’ or suspend my “habits of seeing” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65). It was not just the knowing or understanding of the phenomenon of MDL within an OEPr, as seen through a teacher educator’s experiences that interested me. It was the phenomenon of how participants' MDL shaped micro-practices in becoming open educational practitioners that is the aim of this research.
  
  Interpretive Phenomenology
  
  Interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology focused on embodiment and being in the lifeworlds and intentions relating to a phenomenon and was grounded in the philosophies of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer (Valentine et al., 2018). This shift in phenomenology from knowing to being resulted from Heidegger’s ontological interest in how people gave subjective meaning to phenomena. Interpretive phenomenology was not just concerned with consciousness, but in how lifeworlds constituted intelligible structures (Vagle, 2018) and how these meanings were revealed through language and discourse, thus emphasizing the intentionalities within people’s stories as a form of sense-making (Tracy, 2020). Vagle (2018) applied the preposition ‘in’ to describe the ‘in-ness’ of intentionality whereby the human subject is ‘in’ “intersubjective, contextual relationships” (p. 42). Bracketing was replaced by reflective and reflexive practices that ‘bridle’ or restrain the researcher’s positionality and perspectives on the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018). In this way, the researcher was not removed from the research, but openly acknowledged their assumptions and positionality while they shared their reflexive understandings of the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018).
  
            Although a fuller presentation of interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) as outlined by Smith (2004) was beyond the purposes of this  research, it was important to reveal three characteristic features of IPA – idiography, inductivity, and interrogation – that influence post-intentional phenomenological research. IPA followed an idiographic research sequence, meaning that the researcher collected one case or participant’s story at a time, bringing it to a degree of closure, before moving on to subsequent cases or conducting a cross-case analysis of themes for convergence or divergence (Smith, 2004). Since I conducted interviews and storying events simultaneously and interwoven in time and space, this excluded IPA as a research method.
  
            Researchers following an IPA strategy inductively analyzed data and are open to unanticipated and emergent themes or topics as well as continuing to interrogate extant literature (Smith, 2004). While these characteristics may be evident in the research, since my process included a fluidity to the coding and analysis that deductively generated themes and categories. I explored patterns within the whole-part-whole descriptions of the phenomena in conjunction with the interview process and the reading of literature.
  
            Although transcendental and interpretive forms of phenomenological theory were of interest, it was post-intentional phenomenology (P-IP) that provided the best fit for this research since I posit that the MDL of teacher educators fluent in OEPr will be gathered in a fluid, liminal, boundary crossing, and dynamic praxis that continually shifted toward an ideal of becoming open, becoming literate, and becoming teacher-educator. The next section explores P-IP as it related to this research.
   
• 1 2022-11-02T18:24:06+00:00 Post-Intentional Phenomenology 13 theoretical framework for post-intentional phenomenology plain 2023-10-02T12:10:18+00:00 Post-intentional phenomenology (P-IP) shifted the focus for my research from being to becoming, from “identifying invariant structures … toward exploring the various ways that phenomena are socially produced in context” (Valentine et al., 2018, p.466). Vagle (2018) applied the preposition ‘through’ to describe how the lifeworlds and intentionality found in phenomena were permeable, malleable, non-linear and shifted over time. Intentionalities and lifeworld experiences were reciprocally circulated and produced by the human participants as well as the social systems, habits and practices found ‘through’ the phenomena (Vagle, 2018). Theoretically, P-IP “takes place along the hyphen, the jagged edges of phenomenology and post-structuralist ideas, where stories are in flux, where we enter into middles instead of beginnings or ends” (Vagle, 2015, p. 597). This notion of being hyphenated suited my research questions since I perceived that the phenomenon of media and digital literacies within an OEPr would have no beginning or ending.
  
            This framed my understanding that knowledge of the phenomena, and the phenomenon itself, was fluid, always becoming, since knowing about lived experiences with MDL would be “changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes” (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 101). P-IP researchers suggested that phenomena are not rigid, but were temporal and partial, since the focus of the research is on examining the essential features of the phenomenon “at a given point in time, for a given group of participants, contexts, or cultures” (Valentine et al., 2020, p. 466). Thus, post-intentional phenomenologists take into account the “multi-dimensionality, multi-stability, and the multiple ‘voices’ of things” (Ihde, 2003, p. 25) as well as the variant ways participants’ lifeworlds emerged. It was through the notion of intentionality, or the “directional shape of experiences” (Ihde, 2012, p. 24), that I further determined P-IP was an appropriate theoretical framework for this research. P-IP was theoretically linked to connectivism (Siemens, 2018) in that intentionality was a “commitment to the idea of connection – and that the meaningfulness of living and the lifeworld resides in the connectivity among humans, things, ideas, concepts, conflicts, etc., not in humans or in things or in ideas alone” (Vagle, 2018, p. 128). This suited my research design.
  
            Conceptually, a P-IP paradigm shifted away from the notion that there is a “brute reality out there – present and fixed – with an essence that can be both immediately perceived … and brought to light and expressed in language” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 651). I considered how the phenomenon of media and digital literacy would be represented by transcendental illusions, contaminated by past, present, and future (St. Pierre, 2013; Vagle, 2018). For this research into MDL in the OEPr, I attended to St. Pierre’s (2013) notion of the “materiality of linguistic and discursive practice” (p. 652) where language and reality exist together. Theoretically, P-IP pushed me to consider where I needed to reject binary thinking about becoming media and digitally literate in favour of a logic of connection (St. Pierre, 2013; Vagle, 2018). 
  
            Clarity of the P-IP construct was gained through the Deleuzian conceptions of assemblage and lines of flight (Adkins, 2015: St. Pierre, 2013; Vagle, 2018) as both are seen as central to P-IP. Assemblages, described as the shapes of things, are concrete collections of materials that tend toward both stability and change (Adkins, 2015). Lines of flight are transitory (Adkins, 2015); exhibiting movements of fleeing, flowing, leaking, and eluding (Vagle, 2018) within the phenomenon being researched. Vagle (2018) describes three lines of flight afforded by P-IP which are helpful for this research: first, a “re-conception of the intentional connection” with a “focus on how things connect rather than on what things are” (Vagle, 2018, p. 129, emphasis in original) which emphasizes instability and partiality; second, re-conceiving of intentionality through a both/and perspective of individuals within their worlds, both agent and acted upon; and third, relationships and connections as being less linear, more transitorily multiple and shifting across “distances, intensities, and movements within and among things, relations, ideas, theories, and experiences” (Vagle, 2018, p. 131). These theoretical understandings suited my research design.
  
            When I juxtaposed P-IP with Ellingson’s (2014) conception of crystallization, I confirmed my thinking about how P-IP supported the notion of becoming a media and digitally literate, open educational practitioner. Rocha (2015) re-emphasized that P-IP research was conceived as an assemblage by describing the shifts in phenomenology as it moved from a focus on objects, on being, and on giveness, but added his own reduction with a focus on offerings. St. Pierre (2013) underscored P-IP as being “entangled, connected, indefinite, impersonal, shifting into different multiplicities” (p. 653).
  
            As a P-IP researcher, seeking to find the stories of MDL within OEPr through lived experiences,  I must “examine practices rather than going deep, looking for origins and hidden meanings that exist outside of being” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 649). It would become evident through productions and provocations created with and without technologies, that the temporal, partial, and contextual features of ambiguous, emergent, and variant phenomena (Valentine et al., 2018) such as MDL in an OEPr might be revealed. Thus, my P-IP research would rely on gathering rich data from a variety of sources and from lived-experiences “meant to stand as testimony, bearing witness” (hooks, 1994, p. 11). In this research, proxies for teacher educators’ MDL within their OEPr were revealed in writing, interviews, observations, media productions, discourses, and histories. Rocha (2015) referred to these as “offerings” (p. 6). In this way, the phenomena of becoming a media and digitally literate open educational practitioner in Canadian FoE was understood as a “relation of possible meanings being shaped, produced, and provoked” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 467) and as a “movement against and beyond boundaries” (hooks, 1994, p. 12). 
  
            For P-IP researchers, reflexivity requires a “dogged questioning of one’s own knowledge as opposed to a suspension of this knowledge” (Vagle, 2018, p. 82). This involves continual attention to moments where connection/ disconnection became evident, where normality is assumed, where bottom lines are discovered, and where shock or insights emerge (Valentine, 2018). Research data is iteratively analyzed through wholistic, selective and detailed readings (van Manen, 2014) that shape and crystallize the facets found within whole, parts, meanings, particularities, and unique assemblages. It was in these crystallizing moments that I as a P-IP researcher used reflexivity to open the potentialities of turning to wonder (Rocha, 2015; Vagle, 2018). It was in these open moments when the lived experiences being researched created feelings of awe, perplexity, and surprise. In this way, the research and the writing of phenomenological research benefited from multi-modal expressions of visual, auditory, language, images, art, video, or music (Vagle, 2018; van Manen, 2014). From this review of P-IP I confirmed that this philosophical framework was the best fit for this research.
• 1 2022-06-08T18:26:22+00:00 Research Questions 12 the questions that frame this research plain 2023-10-29T21:50:49+00:00 The primary question for this research is: “What lived experiences of media and digital literacies are evident in the open educational practices of teacher educators in Canadian faculties of education?
  
  These sub-questions help frame the research:
  • What are the lived experiences with media and digital literacies of teacher educators? What does it mean to be media literate and digitally literate as a teacher educator?
  • How do media and digital literacies inform or shape practices of teacher educators immersed in OEPr? As a teacher educator, what is it like to be an open educator and how might media and digital literacies shape your practice?
  • What are the lived MDL experiences of teacher educators in Canada, as evidenced in the ethos and stories of their OEPr?
  Research defines OEPr as collaborative pedagogies utilizing digital technologies and authentic learning encounters for “interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation, and empowerment of learners” (Cronin, 2017, p. 18). In other words, teacher educators will individually or collaboratively select OEPr to support their ways of knowing, designing, planning, and assessing teaching and learning events (Cronin, 2017; Nascimbeni, 2018; Paskevicius, 2018; Paskevicius & Irvine, 2019).
  
            Through this research I capture the teacher educators’ storied enactment of MDL within OEPr as shared through their experiences (what people feel); practices (what people do); things (the objects that are part of our lives); relationships (our intimate social environments); social worlds (the groups and wider social configurations through which people relate to each other); localities (the actual physically shared contexts that we inhabit); and events (the coming together of diverse things in public contexts) (Pink et al., 2015). When gathering these stories, I bring my own lived experiences with MDL in my OEPr as a teacher educator to provide both background and a catalyst through which these stories will reflect and refract.
  
            This post-intentional phenomenological (P-IP) research (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015; Tracy, 2020; Vagle, 2018; Valentine et al., 2018) is explained in the next sections of this dissertation where I bring critical subjectivity, collaborative action, a pragmatic reality, and an epistemology of experience (Guba & Lincoln, 2005). I apply a crystallizing methodology (Ellingson, 2009) to share my voice, reflexivity and media infused textual representations, described as traditional alpha-numeric texts incorporated within images and graphic designs. In this way, I will be interrogated as I locate my ‘self’ as researcher-participant, both within and outside the research field of study (Guba & Lincoln, 2005).
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:53:33+00:00 Philosophy of Technology 10 plain 2023-10-28T13:53:05+00:00 This research was influenced by the philosophy of technology and material engagement theory (Ihde, 2011; Ihde & Malafouris, 2019) in an effort to better understand the human–technology relationship. Although the conception of open education does not absolutely require the use of technology, for this research and its focus on digital literacies, the integration of technology was an essential consideration. Ihde and Malafouris (2019) suggested that "the difference that makes the difference is the recursive effect that the things we make and our skills in making seem to have on human becoming" (p. 195). I recognized that the everyday use of technology in education does not take place in a vacuum nor embody a neutral stance (Van Den Eede et al., 2015). Mediations of reality, as experienced and practiced, are shaped by the tools we use since “artifacts are able to exert influence as material things, not only as signs or carriers of meaning” (Verbeek, 2011, p. 10).
  
            Although not foundational to this research, some understanding of actor network theory (ANT) was necessary (Blok et al., (2019) for this research since it offered some comparison to a philosophy of technology. Similarities included an inter-relational ontology, a material sensitivity, and a rejection of subject-object dichotomy (Ihde, 2015). Both were considerations for this research. However, it was the appeal of the philosophy of technology, which focused on the human action and perception as embodied with/through technology, rather than the linguistic-textual semiotics of engagement offered by ANT, upon which I based this research (Ihde, 2015). My interest focused on understanding how technological mediations and artifacts influenced MDL considerations, and how the individual and socially negotiated actions lead to a teacher educator’s enacted OEPr.
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:52:41+00:00 Connectivism 8 brief description and influence of this theory on the research plain 2023-06-24T14:43:23+00:00 Since my field of study is cognition and learning, the theory of connectivism (Siemens, 2018) was foundational to this research. Connectivism related to the role of cognition in generating connections and networks, both internally and externally to the human brain. Siemens (2012) described the principles of connectivism as a “response to a perceived increasing need to derive and express meaning, and gain and share knowledge. This is pro­moted through externalization and the recognition and interpretation of patterns are shaped by complex networks” (Tschofen & Mackness, 2012, p. 125).
  
            The four key principles of connectivism – autonomy, connectedness, diversity, and openness – (Siemens, 2012; Tschofen & Mackness, 2012) are supported by emerging technologies that are shaping human cognition in the way we “create, store, and distribute knowledge” (Couros, 2010, p. 114). For this research, the cognitive and metacognitive processes, the thinking about thinking with technology, and the thinking with others within connectivist structures enabled by technology as an expression of the lived experiences of teacher educators, were explored in the stories of the teacher educators' teaching and scholarship as they navigated and made sense of complex MDL and OEPr amalgamations.
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:32:47+00:00 Constructivism 7 brief description of constructivism from a sociological position plain 2023-09-30T18:07:50+00:00 This research is grounded in the theoretical landscapes of constructivism outlined by John Dewey and Jean Piaget (DeVries, 2008) who suggested that teaching and learning should be an active, experiential process. Social-constructivism, as advocated by Lev Vygotzky (Burkitt, 2006) extended constructivist theory to include social and historical context into the learning equation. I believe that learning occurs through the active construction and engagement with others, through objects which can be manipulated in time and space (Papert & Harel, 1991). Dewey, Vygotzky and Papert are theorists who ground this research since I believe that MDL and OEPr occur within active, experiential, engaging, constructions, not bound by time or space, while interacting with others.
  
            Further to this, situated cognition theory, that builds on Vygotzky’s work (Burkitt, 2006), proposed that learning is constructed through interactions within social settings, engaging with semiotics, and interacting with material artifacts (Seely Brown et al., 1989). Situated cognition theory adds to this research since the practice of teaching and learning simultaneously occurs in mind, body, and activity, as well as through relationships, bounded in communities of practice. Paying attention to the cultural, situational, and logistical signs and signifiers will impacted my understanding of the phenomena being researched and how teacher educators navigated into MDL infused and digital enabled OEPr spaces.
   
• 1 2023-06-25T19:47:23+00:00 Contributions to OEPr 6 conclusion section outlining how this research contributes to OEPr plain 2023-10-30T21:26:22+00:00

  Contribution to the study of MDL in OEPr

  This research adds to global conversations and the growing body of scholarship in the study of open educational practices (OEPr) by focusing on facets of understanding about MDL as revealed through the lived experiences of TEds (see Figure 22). This research contends that MDL within an OEPr is not contingent on the use or application of OER, as mentioned in research (Cronin, 2018; O’Neill, 2021; Paskevicius, 2018) but on mediations and negotiations within educative communication, creativity, connections, and criticality, as revealed in stories of the participating TEds’ teaching practices. From within these contested, situated, and contextual spaces, this dissertation research contributes to the growing awareness of how an open mindset in teacher education is not solely focused on overcoming ‘know-how’ in order to resolve technical obstacles, but in resolving to view teaching practices differently to support how learning can be achieved (Couros, 2006). The participants in this research continually negotiate and make critical decisions when dialing-it-up or dialing down (see Figure 8) their open educational practices, with awareness of media or digital engagements, as they design and work with students in their learning contexts. Similar to the findings of Paskevicius (2018), this research contributes insights into how the TEds who participated in this research infuse MDL into their OEPr; inviting learners to communicate, connect, create, and critically analyze process, products, and presentations within their learning practices. The participants come from diverse backgrounds in teaching and teacher education, with many holding years of experience as K-12 educators. These lived experiences with MDL are grounded in pedagogical and cognitive practices within the field of education in higher education contexts, but with deeply held connections to K-12 education. The collective expertise of the participants is not directly or explicitly tied to any field of study relating to media studies, media education, digital technologies, or open education.
            
            The MDL within the participants’ OEPr support the findings of (Cronin, 2017), Paskevicius (2018), and Oddone (2019). Cronin (2017) identifies four elements of open educational practices including balancing privacy and openness, developing digital literacies, valuing social learning, and challenging traditional teaching roles and expectations. Paskevicius’ (2018) research identifies three categories of openness, which can be seen as sites where MDL contributes to OEPr, in explorations of open resources, engagements with open design tools and techniques, and open publications that engage in reflection, peer-review and contributions to knowledge building. Similar to Paskevicius’ findings, I see the lived experiences of the participants’ MDL in their OEPr as varied, responsive, complex, and not tied to the use of OER as primary teaching materials.  The participants model a mindset and orientation toward radical flexibility and imaginative use of tools, teaching strategies, and technologies (Veletsianos & Houlden, 2020). Since “academics need to start from their teaching practices in order to find ways in which they can share and collaborate openly” (Inamorato dos Santos, 2019, p. 108) this shift in mindset contributes to clarifications necessary for understandings of the complexity of teaching in the open.
  
            An additional contribution to the field of open education is the explicit distinction I make in the use of the abbreviation / acronym for OEPr. This provides a delineation between the current multiple meanings behind OEP – being applied to both open educational pedagogies and open educational practices. By creating the distinct abbreviation and applying the acronym OEPr to the concept of open educational practices, this contribution within the field highlights the distinctive difference between pedagogy and practice in the field of teaching, and contributes to a clarity to conceptualizations. Although pedagogy focuses on and relates to the act and actions of teaching and learning that usually occur in the classroom, I consider practices as a manifestation of everything educators are and do both in the classroom and beyond. Practices encompass and reflect the educators’ personality, persona, identity, and ethos in how they select, use, and integrate MDL into their OEPr. Educators reveal, both physically and virtually, their identity and selfhood in their pedagogies which are one component of the overall conception of a teaching practice. Thus, I define OEPr as the sum total of an educator’s internal ethos, acts of hospitality, and ways of being open, along with pedagogical decisions and shared scholarship.